Updated 2:41 am, Friday, July 1, 2011

“In the short term, water is more profitable,” he said from the cab of his Kenworth tractor that pulls a 6,000-gallon tank.

Working 12 hours or more a day, including weekends and holidays, Immel struggles to meet the growing demand for water in the Hill Country caused by a drop in production from wells drilled in the Trinity Aquifer.

According to preliminary numbers kept by the National Weather Service, the past nine months have been the driest on record in Texas and the second-driest in San Antonio.

More than 72 percent of the state now is in an “exceptional drought,” with widespread crop failure and shortages of water in reservoirs, rivers and aquifers, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Kendall County, just north of Bexar County, is facing some of the worst of it. The Kendall County Utility Co. has banned all outdoor watering and threatens to cut off water to homeowners who don't comply. Recently, the private utility, which has 854 accounts, had to hire Immel and another driver to haul water for four days when two of its wells failed.

Photo: BOB OWEN

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Mike Burrell, General Manager of Cave Without a Name, just outside of Boerne, checks the level of the underwater river running through the cave. Some believe the underground river is an underground portion of the Guadalupe River.

Mike Burrell, General Manager of Cave Without a Name, just outside of Boerne, checks the level of the underwater river running through the cave. Some believe the underground river is an underground portion of

Micah Voulgaris, General Manager of Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District, sits in front of a geologic map of Texas in his office in Boerne.

Micah Voulgaris, General Manager of Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District, sits in front of a geologic map of Texas in his office in Boerne.

Photo: BOB OWEN

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Mike Burrell (center), General Manager of Cave Without a Name, just out Boerne, explains to guests Kayla Barrera and Josh Brown about the naturally formed pools that are usually full of water. Some believe the underground river in the cave is an underground portion of the Guadalupe River.

Mike Burrell (center), General Manager of Cave Without a Name, just out Boerne, explains to guests Kayla Barrera and Josh Brown about the naturally formed pools that are usually full of water. Some believe the

Charlie Vogt, of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling in Boerne, drills a water well at a new homesite on White Oak Trail just outside Boerne on June 24, 2011.

Charlie Vogt, of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling in Boerne, drills a water well at a new homesite on White Oak Trail just outside Boerne on June 24, 2011.

Photo: BOB OWEN

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Charlie Vogt, of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling in Boerne, checks the consistency of the rock chips coming from the drill and can tell want level he is at by the change of color of the rock chips.

Charlie Vogt, of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling in Boerne, checks the consistency of the rock chips coming from the drill and can tell want level he is at by the change of color of the rock chips.

Photo: BOB OWEN

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Troy Immel climbs up his tanker rig to close the hatch after filling it with water at a GBRA water storage station on Farm Road 3351 in Kendall County. Immel trucks to water to clients who need to fill their new pools because they can't fill it themselves due to current water restrictions.

Troy Immel climbs up his tanker rig to close the hatch after filling it with water at a GBRA water storage station on Farm Road 3351 in Kendall County. Immel trucks to water to clients who need to fill their

Charlie Vogt, of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling in Boerne, watches the gauges as he drills a water well at a new home site on White Oak Trail just outside Boerne on June 24, 2011.

Charlie Vogt, of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling in Boerne, watches the gauges as he drills a water well at a new home site on White Oak Trail just outside Boerne on June 24, 2011.

Photo: BOB OWEN

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John Schwope of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling, uses a divining rod, switching for water at a new home construction site on Timber View Drive outside of Boerne on June 23, 2011.

John Schwope of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling, uses a divining rod, switching for water at a new home construction site on Timber View Drive outside of Boerne on June 23, 2011.

Photo: Bob Owen

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John Schwope of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling, uses a divining rod, switching for water at a new home construction site on Timber View Drive outside Boerne on June 23, 2011.

John Schwope of H.W. Schwope and Sons Water Well Drilling, uses a divining rod, switching for water at a new home construction site on Timber View Drive outside Boerne on June 23, 2011.

Photo: Bob Owen, San Antonio Express-News

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Troy Immel fills the new swimming pool at the home of Desi Vadnais just outside of Comfort. He trucks water to homeowners in Kendall County who need to fill their new pools because they can't fill it themselves due to current water restrictions.

Troy Immel fills the new swimming pool at the home of Desi Vadnais just outside of Comfort. He trucks water to homeowners in Kendall County who need to fill their new pools because they can't fill it themselves

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The rains aren't as sparse as they were during the 1950s drought, which lasted for more than seven years, but then the county had some 4,000 residents. Now, there are 33,000 and instead of ranches and farms that depended on shallow wells, today's residents are maintaining lawns, playing rounds of golf and relaxing poolside.

The greater water use is made possible by deep wells, Voulgaris said. But those wells can't go much deeper and there is less water to go after.

Although 2010 had above-average rainfall, it was insufficient to fully recharge the Trinity after the 2009 drought. The Trinity simply isn't refilling like it once did.

According to records kept by Cow Creek, the Trinity has been on decline since the early 1990s.

That's about that time the population and housing booms started, Voulgaris and well drillers across the county point out.

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“A lot of people back then had windmills,” said John Schwope, the eldest son of the H.W. Schwope & Sons Water Well Drilling, which has been drilling in the Hill Country for more than 50 years. “They did not have all these dishwashers and washing machines.”

Like Immel, the Schwope family and its employees are racing to meet the demand as pumps in wells across the county burn out and need to be lowered and requests for new wells keep coming.

Long-term concerns

A pipeline from Canyon Lake will help the region get through this summer, but the concern for water managers is the long term.

“People don't realize how big of a contribution the Trinity makes to the Edwards,” Voulgaris said.

More than 2 million people get their drinking water from Edwards Aquifer, which was filled to near capacity in 2010.

That water comes from three major sources: rain falling directly on the aquifer's recharge zone and then seeping into the aquifer; streams and rivers crossing the recharge zone and seeping in via faults; and water moving in from neighboring aquifers, like the Trinity, explained Geary Schindel, chief technical officer at Edwards Aquifer Authority.

With the Trinity dropping, the Edwards mostly is reduced to the rainfall that directly hits its recharge zone.

As the rivers and creeks above the Trinity run dry, it's assumed the aquifer's contribution directly to the Edwards also is lower, he added.

“At the end of the year, we will start totaling up our recharge numbers,” Schindel said. “I can guarantee you they will be greatly diminished.”

The Edwards, with its greater size and depth, can handle a longer drought than the Trinity, Schindel said.

Last week's rain caused the Edwards to jump seven feet, but those gains easily could be lost during the next several weeks and put San Antonio into once-every-other-week watering restrictions by the end of July, according to the EAA.

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But because of responsibilities to maintain springflows to protect endangered species and provide water to the cities and industries that also depend on those flows, the EAA will have to keep upping its watering restrictions as the drought continues, Schindel said.

Downstream impacts

Those downstream interests, basically anyone that depends on the Guadalupe River like the city Victoria or companies like Dow Chemical, pay close attention to the Trinity. If it runs low on water, there will be less for the Edwards and thus less for the springs and less water coming to them.

“If the lake was not there, you would not have anything,” West said, explaining that without the ability to slowly release water from Canyon Lake, the lower Guadalupe River would be flowing at even lower levels than it now is and would not come close to meeting demand.

But like the Edwards, Canyon Lake filled up with the above-average rains of 2010. What concerns West is how many droughts in a row the lake can handle and how many times the region will luck out with droughts that last less than two years.

The GBRA helped pay for a tree ring study that showed the drought of the 1950s, which is what regional water plans and the storage capacity of Canyon Lake are based on, was not an anomaly and more severe and longer droughts have occurred.

That means they also could happen again.

For Voulgaris, that's very real concern now.

His aquifer can't recover with the current demand, and more and longer droughts will mean more wells running into trouble and less water for more people.

“Twenty years from now, people are not going to be watering their lawns like they are now,” he said.

If that were to occur, Immel would be grateful. He can't get a break from his workload as it is and has no interest in hauling even more water so homeowners can irrigate plants.